


and by god he was good

by GayKravitz



Series: miles & matt, vigilantes at... crime? [1]
Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: (ripeter is the only one who dies), 2/3 of Team Red, Angst, Death, F/M, Fluff, Found Family, Funerals, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, In more ways than one, Kinda, M/M, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Mourning, Multi, Team Red, Team as Family, They all need hugs, miles is tiny, mixing mcu dd and 616 dd as i please, not really enemies to only kinda reluctant friends and teammates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 09:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19315105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GayKravitz/pseuds/GayKravitz
Summary: He expects the weather. Cold temperatures, maybe mentions of snow. He expects some feel-good story for the kids eating breakfast, something about holiday shopping, something mindless and calm.Matt does not expect to hear the words. “Peter Parker was found dead last night.”





	and by god he was good

Matt is asleep when it happens.

He’s got an arm curled around Foggy, feeling the comforting vibrations of his snoring and sleeping soundly for the first time in a long time. Their hairless monstrosity of a cat is laying directly on Foggy’s head. Matt is warm and happy and smiles in his sleep when it happens.

He doesn’t wake up during the earthquake. He doesn’t wake up when half the lights in Manhattan go out. He doesn’t wake for anything, he breathes deeply and holds his small family close.

He’d spoken to Peter the day before. He’d given him info on their favorite Kingpin, he’d talked with Peter about his plan to bring him down. Peter had talked about Mary Jane’s plans to get a dog even if the landlord was against it. He’d talked about so many useless, small little things. They’d drank their coffees, they’d hugged goodbye, they had parted ways.

Matt wakes up like he always does on a Saturday morning. He comes to awareness, he stretches out in his bed like a lazy cat and listens to Foggy’s heartbeat, and idly scans through each other apartment in his complex to listen to other people listening to the morning news.

He expects the weather. Cold temperatures, maybe mentions of snow. He expects some feel-good story for the kids eating breakfast, something about holiday shopping, something mindless and calm.

Matt does not expect to hear the words. “Peter Parker was found dead last night.”

He doesn’t process it. He doesn’t think anything of it until he hears-

“But to the people of New York, he was more commonly known as the masked hero Spider-Man. Parker was a 26 year old grad student-”

And now Matt is sitting up, he’s shaking, he’s standing and mindlessly moving towards the bedroom door. Foggy stirs at his jagged breathing.

“Matt?” He mumbles from the bed. Matt doesn’t hear him. He leaves the bedroom and finds his cellphone (discarded somewhere on the couch last night- he was distracted with someone else,) because all he can think is call him. Call him. Call him.

So he calls. He calls Peter and it rings and rings and rings and with each ring he can feel his stomach sinking lower and lower.

“Don’t,” He murmurs to himself, to God, and to Peter. “Don’t.”

He calls three more times.

It gets picked up on the fourth call.

“Pete?” Matt lets the worry, the hope, the pain seep into his voice. “Peter?”

The person on the other end bursts into tears.

“Matt,” MJ cries into the phone. “ _Matt_.”

The world falls out from under him. He drops the phone, doesn’t notice Foggy pick it up. Doesn’t notice Foggy ask what’s wrong, what’s going on, MJ? Doesn’t hear MJ explain in four simple words.

“He’s gone. Peter’s dead.”

He notices Foggy choke up, he hears him swallow and deny it, laugh, and then begin to cry.

Matt can’t breathe. Foggy keeps crying and mushes his hands into his face and Matt doesn’t move because he’s trying and failing to come up with evidence

Because Peter would never hide it from MJ, he would never put her through this. If anything happened he would contact her first. He always told MJ everything. He put Mary Jane first before himself, before New York even.

“I- I had to- to ID the body.” MJ tells Foggy.

“Who-?” Foggy can barely choke out the one word.

“Fisk.” And that’s all Matt needs to know.

He moves fast. He pulls his suit from it’s hiding place, he strips from his pajamas and begins to pull it on piece by piece.

“Matt,” Foggy says, having already said some kind words to MJ and hung up. “Stop.”

“I’m going to kill him.” Matt mutters. “I’m going to kill Fisk.”

“No you aren’t.”

“He needs to die.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Matt shoves his foot into a boot angrily. “He needs to pay, goddamnit!”

“Matty!” Foggy cries out, his voice breaking. “Listen to me.”

Matt pauses.

“You can’t kill him. You can’t.” Foggy tells him, and wraps his arms around him. “Please. I need you here, Matty. Please don’t run away again.”

Matt’s anger disappears. He ducks his head and gently pulls off the pieces of his suit he managed to get on.

“Ok.” Matt sighs and turns, pressing a kiss to Foggy’s temple and gathering him up in his arms. They’re both shaking, both trembling, both full of grief and anger.

They just hold each other, for a long time. Hours. Matt drowns himself in Foggy instead of his rage and his hurt. It helps. It’s not enough.

“Wade,” Foggy rasps, eventually. He has no more tears, for now.

Matt nods, understanding instantly. He stands from the place they had fallen together on the floor and kisses Foggy before picking up the phone and calling Wade.

It goes to voicemail immediately. Even the second time.

Matt decides to leave to find him.

\----

He breaks into his apartment. It’s empty, the TV smashed and his phone left cold and alone on the counter. He hasn’t been home since last night, he can smell it. He can also smell the blood that’s soaking into the couch, the floor, the walls. Fresh, still damp. It smells like Wade. Matt feels sick and leaves the apartment.

He doesn’t find Wade.

\----

The funeral is the next day.

The burial is private, friends and family only, yet so many are there. He pulls specific people out from the crowd, like MJ and May and Harry and Felicia, but there's so many he doesn’t know. Who didn’t know about his other life, whether they knew Peter or Spider-Man. Co-workers, college friends, hell even his _boss_ is there. The one that slandered Spider-Man in his paper, the one that called him a menace and a terrorist. He’s there, standing further away than the rest of them as Peter is lowered into the ground.

And if Matt needed anymore assurance that yes, he’s really dead, the kid is dead and you did nothing to help him, he gets it right then and there because he can smell him. He can smell him through the wood of the casket and he smells like formaldehyde and Peter Parker. He smells like WD-40 and textbooks and spandex and blood and _rot_. Peter is in that wooden coffin. There isn’t any coming back- not from this.

It makes him sick all over again. He presses his face into Foggy’s shoulder and tries to mask the scent with Foggy’s. He’s shaking so hard he can’t hold his cane anymore, he just drops it into the snow. They leave as soon as Foggy says a few kind words to MJ and May.

Matt doesn’t say anything. He can’t say anything. He cries silently for Peter and prays silently, too. He prays and begs Him to be merciful because Peter was _good_. He was good and kind and he deserves eternal rest. He deserves God’s mercy and forgiveness, even if Matt does not.

He goes out that night, hoping to beat some faces in and scream from the rooftops but it’s quiet. It seems even the scum and evil are in mourning. He finds someone, eventually, just a kid with a knife and a growling stomach and he can’t bring himself to do it. He tells the kid to get lost and slams his hands into the brick wall until they bleed.

He scales the building and paces back and forth on the rooftop, his hands shaking from pain and something else. He screams at the sky until his throat is raw and curses God for taking him from them.

Matt has gone through the stages of grief so often in his life that now it feels like coming home.

 

\----

 

He doesn’t go to the memorial banquet that Fisk sets up. He doesn’t trust himself to not run right up to him and plant his fist into his face until he feels his bones crunch and slice through his flesh and sink into his brain. Until he can feel what Peter felt. 

No, he decides. He has to take him down methodically. He has to dismantle him piece by piece. Fisk has never stayed down for long, but Matt will make sure he gets what he’s owed. What he deserves.

Except… something weird happens.

He didn’t feel it the first night, but tonight he pauses his grief counseling with a lowlife he caught trying to follow a girl home. There’s a rumbling, something someone else might take as a full scale earthquake. Matt knows better. He can feel it in his teeth. This isn’t an earthquake.

He hears cries, exclamations, and the world begins to go fuzzy for him. The city shifts and spasms and things begin changing shape and texture and gain and lose mass right in front of him. It makes his head hurt and his bearings go out of the window, and he falls to his knees just trying to find something to cling to.

It when he hears the screaming does he move.

The ‘earthquake’ causes a small, already falling apart, family restaurant to collapse. He follows the screams and knows there’s a man trapped inside the wreckage, and something heavy pressing on his ribcage. He doesn’t wait, doesn’t stop, he barges past the woman crying out for him on the sidewalk and goes in. He saves the man from the bricks trapping him and nods at his thanks before running off to help someone else screaming.

The earthquakes stop only a few minutes later. The world continues to become harder to understand, harder to feel, but Matt pushes through. He saves as many as he can from crumbled buildings, from broken bridges, from house fires. His lungs are burning and his legs shaking from exhaustion and he realizes idly while pulling a child from a car in danger of falling into a sinkhole that he is definitely not as young as he used to be.

He keeps going until the city goes quiet again. He keeps going until the sun is rising and someone is calling his burner for the thirtieth time because Peter would keep going no matter how hard it is.

(Peter had superhuman strength and stamina so he’s not entirely sure if it should apply to him, too, but he does everything he can.)

He answers the phone finally, finally, when the cries for help die off and he thinks the sun is in the sky and Matt is this close to just passing out from this dumpster he’s found himself in. He thinks he’s somewhere in Queens. He doesn’t remember how he got to Queens.

“Matt, you fucking asshole, I swear to god if you’re dead I’m going to skin you myself,”

“Sorry.” He says, doesn’t really mean it. His eyes are already falling closed.  

“You motherfucker. Don’t ever do that again.I thought you-” Foggy sounds like he’s in tears. “I can’t- I can’t lose you, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Matt says softer, this time. He didn’t- oh god, he didn’t even realize. He’s so selfish he just forgot. He forgot that Foggy loved Peter too. “I’m sorry, Fogs. I’m so sorry. People needed help and- and I couldn’t find time to stop.”

Foggy takes a couple minutes to calm himself down, and Matt lets his head rest against the garbage bag under him.

“I love you,” He says to Matt. “But if you ever not answer your phone like that again, in the middle of a crisis, I will _maim_ you. Understand?”

“I understand,” Matt swallows thickly. “I’m sorry. I love you, too.”

“Jesus, it’s like the earthquakes made you revert into your habits from ten years ago.” Foggy jokes, but he’s still choked up.

Matt doesn’t have a satisfactory answer for that, so he doesn’t answer. He changes the subject. “Do they know what was going on with the earthquakes? Because they didn’t feel like earthquakes.”

“That’s because they weren’t earthquakes” Foggy says, letting him brush away his concern for the time being. “Yeah, apparently it was Fisk. Something happened at the banquet, apparently he had a giant machine in his basement that caused it. It made most of New York experience a power outage, too.”

“Is MJ okay?” He knows she had been there. She knew exactly who killed her husband, even if the media and the cops didn’t, and she wasn’t one to pass up the chance to get information directly from the lion himself when he invites her to his den.

“Yeah, she texted me. They’re all okay.” Foggy says and Matt sighs in relief.

“Good. That’s good.” Matt feels himself already drifting off. Hey, this dumpster is pretty cozy. “Did Fisk get arrested?”

“Yeah, he did, but Matt listen,” Foggy says, and Matt hums. “Spider-Man was the one who took him down.”

His brain doesn’t process this. “What?”

“It’s not Peter.” Foggy quickly cuts off any train of thought that may contain ‘Not dead’. “I don’t know how, but it’s a different Spider-Man. He had a black and red suit, not blue and red.

Matt feels something ugly and nasty twist in his chest. “He’s not Peter.”

Foggy hesitates at his tone. “No, but he took down Fisk, Matt-“

“I don’t care.” Matt groans and lifts himself from the dumpster. The smell of rotting meat was getting to be a bit much. “There’s a new Spider-Man, only days after Peter died? It smells fishy.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s obvious, Fogs,” Matt swings his legs over the side. “He’s either just some kid with a deathwish trying to replace him only for the glory of it, or someone with bad intentions.”

“Matt, he _avenged_ him,”

“I don’t care.” He repeats and sways on his feet a little when he stands up. “If it isn’t Peter, I don’t care.”

“Matt,” Foggy sighs at him.

“Foggy,” He mimics. He groans and presses a hand to his ribs. Took a hard fall at some point. Can’t remember. Should get that checked out. “I’m going to May’s. I think I have a concussion.”

“You think?” Foggy sputters and Matt laughs a little. “I’ll see you later, then. Go get patched up. Man, I wish Claire was still in the game, I could make hot nurse jokes again.”

Matt laughs again. “You can still make hot nurse jokes, I’m sure May would appreciate them.”

“Yeah, but Peter would-“ He stops. Matt stops. He feels sick again. It’s been happening a lot lately. “Sorry. I just.”

“I know.” Matt says gently. “I love you, Foggy.”

“Love you too, give a hug to May for me. If you aren’t home by 12, I will storm over to Queens and make good on my promise earlier.”

“I’ll be home by then, okay? See you.”

Matt hangs up. He stands in the alley a little longer before limping his way to May’s house.

When he gets there, it takes him five whole seconds to realize something’s wrong. There’s pieces of roof and wood and insulation scattered in the street and the yard and Matt feels his stomach drop and hobbles faster to the house.

He goes through the backyard, not sure if the neighbors would be kind enough to just let Daredevil enter Spider-Man’s Aunt’s house without calling the cops.

He sighs when he hears May’s heartbeat in the kitchen, and the smell of food being made. Eggs, toast and tea, black tea. He tries not to sneak up on her when he opens the door, letting it squeak open. May’s heart spikes and she’s swinging a bat at him before even looking, but he catches it in a hand.

“It’s just me,” He says, and she drops the bat.

“Oh, I’m- I’m so sorry, Matthew,” She apologizes and embraces him. He doesn’t fight it like he usually does, just wraps a single arm around her and breathes her in. She smells like WD-40 and black tea and rose perfume. “I’m sorry, it’s been… it’s been a hectic few days.”

Matt pulls away first, and nods his head towards the giant hole in her wall that’s covered with a tarp. “What happened there?”

“I think that one was The Scorpion’s fault.” She muses lightheartedly.

“The Scorpion?” He scans over her for injuries, but finds her in perfect health.

“Mhm. Big fight, but I had some help.” May doesn’t sound like she’s quite ready to expand on that. “Do you want some tea after I check you out?”

He hates tea. “Yes, please.”

Matt doesn’t have a concussion. They have tea. They bring out foldable chairs, as the other ones are smashed up on the lawn. May eats her breakfast, and insists on Matt having some too even if she made one portion. He takes some toast and chews on it. He realizes his mask is still on, and pulls it off while he still has toast in his mouth.

It’s quiet. Matt wants to say something, anything. He wants to tell her about how good her nephew was, but he knows she knows. He wants to tell her he’s sorry for not doing more. He wants to cry on her and apologize for encouraging him to take on Fisk. He wants to swap stories of Peter, the good and the bad. He wants to tell her about how he mentored him with Wade for so long and how he was always proud of the man he had become. They didn’t speak at the funeral, but he could feel her watching him. He wants to ask her if she knew how much he loved Peter.

He doesn’t say any of these things. He sips the gross hot leaf water and asks a different question. “Have you heard of the new Spider-Man?”

“Yes,” She says. “He took down Wilson Fisk.”

“Have you met him?”

It comes out wrong. It doesn’t sound as innocent as he wants, there’s an underlying bitterness that didn’t come from the tea. He can tell that May gives him a cursory glance from over her tea cup, perhaps gauging if she’d be able to lie to him.

“Yes,” She answers honestly. “He’s a good kid. Not even in high school, but he’s got a good family to rely on. He’s not afraid to ask for help, either.”

“Hm.” Matt doesn’t want to sound bitter. He doesn’t want to be mad at him or dump his baggage on a kid. It’s just- it feels like this kid couldn’t even wait until Peter was cold in his grave before taking over his mantel. Did he ever even meet Peter? “If you say so.”

May must have laser eyes, because Matt can feel the death glare she gives him like it’s fire burning through his skin.

“He’s a good kid,” She repeats, setting her cup down. “And he’s going to need help in the near future. You better be there when he needs it.”

“I don’t even know this kid,” Matt says, anger seeping through his attempt at neutrality. “Why should I help him?”

“Because Peter would.” And Goddamnit. She’s right. She’s always right.

Shame and anger burns in Matt’s throat. “Peter isn’t here.”

“Peter is always here.” May seethes. “As long as people are being saved, as long as people believe in Spider-Man, Peter will always be here.” Matt doesn’t want this. He wants to be miserable and rage at the world. He doesn’t want comforting words. “The new Spider-Man is _good_. Help him, like you helped Peter all those years ago. Stop pinning your anger on him, and put that passion to good use.”

Matt doesn’t have a response. It hurts being called out like this, it hurts to have his feelings shoved back in his face. He manages to keep his hands from shaking in anger.

He finishes his tea in silence. It tastes even more bitter on his tongue, now.

\----

When he gets home around noon, he presses himself into Foggy just to make sure he was there, make sure he wasn’t a ghost too. Foggy decides for both of them to have a day in and order food later. Matt just nods silently and gets into bed with him. He goes over May’s words to him in his head over and over again.

Peter is always here. He’ll always be here. As long as there are lives being saved in his memory, he will be here.

He remembers being with Peter the night he thought the kid was going to die. He couldn’t even remember how hurt Pete had been, he just remembered him screaming at the kid’s unconscious form and praying all through the night.

It was close- it was so close they had him admitted to a hospital under the pretense of him being a John Doe who was hit by a car. Once he was stable and not needing anymore care they snuck him out, but he didn’t actually full wake up until five days after.

He remembers May calling him and literally running from the courthouse to Queens and seeing Peter sitting up and awake and lucid. The relief he felt was immeasurable.

There’s no relief here.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Foggy is holding him tighter and crying with him.

“He was so good.” He whispers, his voice breaking, his nose buried in Foggy’s shoulder. Foggy shakes with quiet sobs. “He was so good. I loved him. I- I don’t think he knew, Foggy. He didn’t know.”

“He knew.” He told him, equally as pained, equally as hurt. “He knew, he loved you too. He loved you.”

It’s not the ‘love’ part that wrecks him.

It’s the past tense.

Matt want to bury himself in Foggy’s arms, in his chest, in his ribcage and let the staccato of his heartbeat lull him to sleep. Foggy smells like their favorite Thai place and the cologne that he gets because of how much Matt likes it and just _home_ , and it’s enough to make Matt break apart, just for tonight.

Tomorrow he’ll pull himself back together again like an obedient marionette. But tonight, he can be here in his husband’s arms and mourning the loss of a good man.

\----

Matt doesn’t actually run into Spider-Man until a month after Peter’s death.

It’s quiet. January is quiet, usually. Not completely devoid of criminal activity, but quieter. Something to do with it being after the holidays, probably. Maybe most criminals make a resolution to do less crime, spend more time with the family. But, just like everyone else, it always falls through and they get back to routine by February.

(It would feel a little less lonely with Wade, but he’s been MIA since the night Peter died.)

Matt stomps on some would-be rapist’s wrist and smiles at the feeling of it snapping and the scream that comes with it. He’s whimpering and sniveling on the ground. The guy he tried to rape is standing behind Matt, watching it happen, his heart is racing but Matt can tell he’s enjoying the show.

“Please,” Mr. Almost-A-Rapist begs, as if he actually thinks he would be shown mercy. Matt snarls. He slams his steel toed boot into the side of his head. He’s out cold, just like that. Pathetic.

He sighs in disappointment, but inclines his head towards the would-be victim. “You okay?”

He nods. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks.”

“You should leave. This guy isn’t coming after you again. He’ll be lucky if he can ever use that wrist again.”

“Thanks.” He repeats, and shuffles out of the alley. He pauses next to the unconscious shithead and gives him a kick in the ribs. Matt smirks as he hears the guy spit on him, before speed walking away.

With that guy gone, and the other unconscious, Matt moves his head up to the roof above.

“I know you’re there,” He calls out, and hears the figure on said roof flinch and hiss out a swear.

The figure smells like spray paint and Axe and spandex, and Matt hears the soft _thwip_ of the web shooters as the figure comes closer to the ground. He’s hanging upside down, swaying gently in the breeze.

“Hey,” Spider-Man says in a fake deep voice that makes Matt exhale sharply. “Good work, Daredevil.” The kid says, and Matt can almost hear the wince in his voice as he eyes the form behind him. “Is he- Is he gonna be okay?” He drops the fake voice, maybe on accident.

“He’ll live.” Matt says simply.

“So…” Spider-Man says, moving so he swings left to right on his string. “How’s it going, man?”

Matt doesn’t know what to make of this kid. He’s at least glad that he doesn’t sound or smell like Peter. “Quiet tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah, I feel you,” He nods, still swinging like a pendulum. “Uh, but like, outside of that?”

Matt tilts his head, hearing the underlying question. “May told you I knew Peter.”

“Yeah,” He admits almost guiltily. “She didn’t tell me much, though, except that you mentored him?” Matt nods. “That’s pretty cool of you. Y’know, uh. When- when I met him, he said, he said he would. Teach me, I mean.”

“Yeah?” Matt doesn’t like where this is going.

“Yeah. He. I was there.” He sounds sad. Really sad. “When it happened. I was there.”

“Oh.” Matt’s gut twists so painfully. He wants to throw up. He wants to asks why didn’t you stop it then? Why didn’t you save him. He would’ve saved you. He gave his life for you and you couldn’t be fuckin’ bothered to save it. Spider-Man saves people so why the fuck didn’t you?

May and Foggy would never forgive him if he said any of these things. So he bites his tongue and crosses his arms.

“And- and there was someone else to teach me the basics but- there’s still a lot I don’t know.” He keeps going as if Matt wants anything to do with him at this point. “So, I was wondering-“

“No.” Matt cuts him off. He doesn’t care about this kid. This Spider-Man wannabe is making him sick by his mere presence.

“Oh,” He sounds so sad. So disappointed. Matt feels rage bubble under his skin. He purses his lips as the kid flips and lands on the ground upright. “It’s okay, I- I understand, Mr. Daredevil. I understand.” He repeats, and he really does mean it.

There’s a pause.

“I- I should get going.” He says, and Matt just nods. “I’ll… I’ll see you around, yeah?” He sounds hopeful, still.

Matt doesn’t even raise a hand at him as he goes, swinging from the alley to the street.

He leaves the smell of spray paint behind to linger in the air.

Matt doesn’t see him again for a while after, he seems to stay around the Brooklyn area, but he listens to Foggy narrate all his battles with Doc Ock and the Green Goblin that show up on the news. He’s got moves, apparently. Probably found someone else to teach him.

\----

“What the fuck?” Wade yells from his kitchen.

Matt jumps with a curse, pulling his earbuds from his ears and standing. He’s moving into the kitchen before he can even process what’s happening, finding Wade Wilson sitting at his dining table and staring at his phone.

“Wade?” He says, blinking in surprise.

“There’s a new Spider-Man?”

Matt’s brow furrows. “Wade, where have you been?”

“Three month Canadian wilderness hike.” He explains plainly. “Answer the question, Matthew. Spider-Man.”

That makes him pause. “Oh. Yeah. The kid.”

“It’s not-?”

“No,” Matt cuts him off there. “No.”

Wade hums. “So he’s taken up Petey’s title?”

“Suppose so.”

“Do MJ and May know?”

“Yeah, they’ve met him.”

“Have you?”

Matt hesitates. “Yes,” He says decidedly. “Once.”

Wade goes quiet, waiting.

“He’s very young. Way younger than Peter was when he first started. He’s still figuring it out.” Matt tells him. “He stays in Brooklyn, mostly.”

“Huh.” Wade says. “You wanna go hit up Brooklyn tonight?”

He does not. “Sure.”

\----

Apparently Daredevil going outside of the Manhattan area when there isn’t a crisis was close to seeing God step down from Heaven, and everyone and their mother was suddenly posting on every single social media site their exact locations every five minutes.

Matt growls at the couple of people filming them from the streets while they were on a roof. “I hate this.”

“Hello, Brooklyn!” Wade yells out from the rooftop, waving to all the passersby.

A couple people cheer. Matt groans.

“I LOVE YOU DEADPOOL!” Someone cries.

“I appreciate the sentiment but I’m not looking for commitment!” He shouts back. “I only like you as a friend!”

There's a loud pop next to him. “Hey!”

Wade screams. Matt doesn’t, because he heard the kid coming from a mile away.

Wade falls off the building, right into the walled off alley next to it. Matt hears Wade’s skull crack against the pavement and his heart stop for a minute.

“OH CRAP,” The poor kid cries out, scrambling down the building after him. “OH MY GOD, I KILLED HIM!”

Matt feels bad now

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, he’s not breathing. Oh my god he’s dead, I just killed Deadpool!”

Wade’s heart starts up again. The kid is in tears. Matt sighs heavily.

The kid screams this time. Wade has picked him up by the armpits like a cat and is standing again, despite the copious amount of blood coming from his head.

“Holy shit, you’re so tiny!” Wade exclaims in glee. “You’re like an infant! You’re a toddler!”

“Put me down! I’m not a baby!” Spider-Man cries.

“You’re like a little mini-Spidey! This is amazing! Do you look like baby Pete? Do you have chubby, red, little baby cheeks?”

“Uh, um,” The kid is entirely uncomfortable right now.

“Red!” Wade calls out to him. “Red, have you SEEN this kid? He’s like a stringbean! Like a little stick!”

Matt takes a deep breath and takes the fire escape down.

“Alright, put him down.” He tells Wade, who audibly pouts but does so. Spider-Man creeps closer to Matt, peering at Wade suspiciously. “Been a while, Spider-Man.”

He turns to look at him. “Oh, yeah, sorry about that.” He apologizes for some reason. Matt’s not even sure why. He definitely didn’t do anything to contact him after their first meeting. “It’s just, y’know, Brooklyn’s a little closer to home than Hell’s Kitchen. Not- not that I live around here!”

“Of course not.”

“Tiny… so small…” Wade coos at him from a distance. “Like a little baby. A tiny little baby boy.”

“I’m a man!” Spider-Man insists. “I’m grown!”

“Baby. Baby boy.”

“No!”

“Tiny Spidey. Itsy bitsy spider.”

“No!!!”

“Wade,” Matt warns, despite being almost amused by this whole interaction.

Wade hums and goes quiet but still vibrates in excitement. Spidey keeps his distance.

He clears his throat. “How’ve you been?” That seems like a polite thing to say.

He lights up at this. “Oh, oh, oh!! Did you see my last fight with Doc Ock?? She’s was trying to rob a bank because now she’s all broke now, but then I swooped right in and kicked her butt!”

“Nice work.” Matt says and he surprises himself by actually meaning it.

Spider-Man preens at the praise. He reminds Matt of Peter when he was young so much. He kind of wants to throw up again.

“Hey, by the way, what are you guys doing in Brooklyn?” He asks. “Don’t y’all stay like, mostly in Manhattan?”

“Wade wanted to meet you.”

“Yeah?” He asks, suddenly suspicious again. “Why?”

“‘Cause the kid I mentored for years is dead and I wanted to meet the guy who took on his legacy.” Wade says in his fake cheerful and deflecting emotions tone.

“Oh,” He sounds sad. So far, the only feelings he’s had about this kid is that he hates when he’s sad. “Am I… up to your expectations?” He holds his arms out, like he’s being judged for his outfit.

Wade hums and haws for a moment. He examines him carefully, poking his cheek and squishing his bicep. He does one more look over and nods. “You’re acceptable.”

It’s such a backhanded compliment, but it makes the kid happy enough to bounce on his toes a little bit.

Wade gasps suddenly. “I just had the best idea!”

“What?” Matt asks.

“Let’s go fight crime together!”

Matt wants to grimace. “No. I took you to meet him. I’m going back.”

“Reeeeeeed,” Wade whines.

He doesn’t respond, just scales the wall of the building up to the roof. He doesn’t even know why. He can’tb e here, he can’t be near Wade and the kid at the same time, not when Wade accepted Peter’s replacement so _easily_. 

“Is he always like that?” Spider-Man asks 

Wade doesn’t answer.

 

\----

Wade goes back to his apartment. He gets help from someone to scrub the blood off the wall. And the floor. And the sofa. Somehow even in the air vents. Matt doesn’t even want to ask how he managed that.

Matt copes. He buries himself in Foggy when the world is so, so much. He continues to drink far too much coffee. He goes out with Jessica and Luke sometimes, and pretends to not smile every time Danielle laughs. He smiles and he laughs, himself. He visits Peter. He goes to Mass. He keeps going.

He goes out every night, still. Foggy waits up for him every night, still.

He won’t say it but Matt knows Foggy. He knows his husband. Foggy is scared of Matt dying now more than ever. It happens every time someone they know gets seriously hurt. It’ll keep happening, and Matt will come home every night with a bloody face and aching knuckles and a little less rage at the world and Foggy will still kiss him like it’s the last time they’ll see each other alive. He’ll patch up every injury with the most gentle hands while promising further pain if he ever gets hurt too badly, and holds Matt tight until he stops trembling and falls asleep.

Wade and Spider-Man are hanging out more, he also notices. Well, that’s what the media is saying. He knows it’s more of Wade chasing after the tiny Spidey to hold him under his arm like a football or wearing him like a backpack just because he’s just so small and Wade is gigantic. It’s also Spidey trying to stop Wade from killing anyone by webbing him up every night and leaving him hanging from somewhere different.

It leaves a sour taste in his mouth that he can’t describe. May’s words come back to him again, and he grimaces and continues to listen to the news on the TV while getting ready for his day. He doesn’t need this today, the weatherman is talking about temperatures above 70 degrees and he’s already dying.

Foggy and Matt go to work. They still have the _Nelson, Murdock, and Page_ sign up. The third desk is still empty. It still smells like her, like gardenia perfume and pine wood and newspaper. Neither of them have the guts to put her stuff away. It would feel like giving up. Like letting go of her ghost. It feels like a disgrace to the legacy she left behind.

It’s midday, with all the fans on high and pointed at Matt, when the door opens tentatively. There’s two people, he notices just out of habit, a child and adult. Foggy greets them, Matt’s focused on reading this file he has pulled up on his laptop.

“Oh, May! How’s it going?”

Matt puts his reading on hold and really pays attention now. He stands and walks to his office entrance, lingering in the doorway. It’s definitely May Parker, he knows her heartbeat by (ha) heart at this point, but this kid with her smells like chili powder and Axe and spray paint.

“Spider-Man?” Matt blurts out, interrupting Foggy. May and the kid look right at him.

It’s a beat before he responds. “What’s Spider-Man?”

May face palms. Foggy is trying very, very hard to keep from laughing. Spidey is beginning to blush.

“Okay,” May sighs. “Now that we have that out of the way. Miles, this is Matthew Murdock. Matt, Miles Morales. Now shake hands.”

Miles offers his hand first, which Matt shakes very tentatively.

“How’d you know I’m Spider-Man??” He asks.

Matt hesitates, pursing his lips. Foggy comes to his rescue. “Oh, I can answer this one.” Foggy comes up behind him and puts two hands to the sides of his head, curling his fingers into two tiny, horn shapes.

Miles needs fifteen seconds to figure it out. “Daredevil???”

Matt just nods, which he still thinks is better than going ‘Daredevil? Never heard of ‘im.’

“Woah,” He exclaims, craning his neck to get a better look. “You’re blind? Is that how you weren’t surprised by me being invisible?”

“You can turn invisible?” Matt asks, surprised.

“I guess that’s a yes,” Miles mutters. “Wait, how can you tell it’s me?”

“I have enhanced senses.” Matt explains easily and smoothly, having done this so many times before. “I can recognize your smell. And your heartbeat, once I get to know you.”

Miles grins. “I just thought you had a Spidey-Sense like me. Like- like a Devil-Sense!”

Matt smiles back, finding his enthusiasm a little infectious. Like a tumor. “No, I can just hear you really well.”

“Man, that’s so cool. My spidey-sense just like warns me about incoming hits, or if someone is trouble or like me.”

“Like you?”

Miles’s heart does something nervous sounding. “Oh, yeah, like if they’re a superhero, too. Oh my god, wait, am I a superhero?”

Matt laughs, actually laughs, even if he knows Miles just lied to his face. Everyone lies, and he hasn’t done anything to win this kid’s trust anyways. He hasn’t even made an effort to make sure he’s doing okay by himself.

But, Matt reasons with himself, he’s not by himself, he has May. He has a family. Matt shakes his guilt from his head but it just sinks its teeth into his guts.

“Not that I don’t adore you, May, but did you just want to stop by to introduce Matt to Miles?” Foggy asks, but pauses. “Wow, that’s a lot of M names.”

“Miles gave me the brilliant idea to sue Alchemax for the damages to my house that I haven’t been able to fix yet.” May says with several ounces of pride. She has both her hands on Miles’s shoulders, who smiles. “So I wanted to ask you two for help.”

“Of course we can help.” Matt answers. “We can go through the steps together, now, if you’d like?”

May sighs gratefully and nod. Miles beams.

“To the conference room!” Foggy exclaims, leading the charge. Miles bounces behind him, probably excited to do something that seems so grown up.

May leaves the office a couple hours later with a file of broken down legalese and several contact cards for some civil litigation lawyers in Queens. They recommended she send a letter to Alchemax directly first, to try and settle it outside of court, and if that didn’t work, they would file a lawsuit.

She leaves with hugs and cheek kisses and promises of coming by with some desserts for the help. Matt smiles and informs her of his allergy to cashews. She promises no cashews.

Miles asks, “Why cashews specifically though, like, isn’t it usually just all nuts? That’s so weird. Only cashews?”

“Maybe the chemicals he got splashed in his eyes as a kid were cashew-phobic.” Foggy suggests.

“That’s weird.” Miles says, eyeing Matt like he’s going to suddenly turn into a cashew. Matt is trying very hard to fight off an amused smile. May forces him out of the office.

May pauses in the door on her way out, having pushed Miles ahead of her. She stops, turns, and Matt can’t see her expression but she’s got her laser eyes on again. He can feel them.

“I worry about Miles.” She states plainly. “I don’t doubt his abilities, not for a second, but I worry, still. Please, take care of him. Help him. Let him know he isn’t alone.”

“Of course we will.” Foggy says with all his heart.

Matt doesn’t know what to say. He works his throat for a bit but comes up with nothing.

May’s posture softens. Her laser eyes are put away. “Peter thought the world of you two. He loved you two. You were his family.”

Matt can feel the grief he’s kept buried in his chest rear its ugly head, and he already wants to just crawl into bed and cry, but she keeps going. “I know I was wary of you in the early days, Matt, but I’m so glad you were there for him when I didn’t know how to be. And when I did know, but still couldn’t. You and Wade… he wouldn’t have survived as long as he did without you two. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Matt can’t breathe. He just nods tightly, waits for her to leave, to walk around the corner with Miles in tow, before collapsing into Foggy.

“I know, I know, Matty, I know.” Foggy comforts him and his breaths are coming in fast and hard, now. He smashes his face harder into his chest and just shakes his head. Foggy pets his hair and Matt focuses on breathing and trying to stop his shaking.

They stay like that for a while. Foggy has always been and always will be his anchor, and he finds himself murmuring his praises into his neck when his shaking has stopped and he’s shoved his grief right back into it’s little bottle. Foggy holds him tighter.

\----

He takes May’s words to heart, again. He always does. She’s a wealth of wisdom and rightness and it's only slightly infuriating. He can feel each word she’s given him sticking deep into his, sharp and painful like tiny knives between his ribs.

He doesn’t act on the words for a few weeks. He lets himself stew in guilt and misplaced anger and suffocating grief. It’s been four months, now.

Wade comes by and sees him lying so pitifully on the couch when Foggy is out visiting his family that he takes it upon himself to make him feel better. This involves laying on top of Matt’s back and fluffing his hair while cooing over how orange it is and poking him enough times that Matt forces him onto the ground and starts trying to strangle him. Wade takes this in stride and starts rolling around on the floor with him, roughhousing in a way that wasn’t even roughhousing, just beating each other the fuck up.

Eventually Wade escapes onto the roof and Matt is halfway out of the window, wearing nothing but sweatpants, when Foggy walks in the door.

Foggy forces him to go out later that night to work off his energy. Matt whines a little but does as he’s told because he, Matt Murdock, is a fool only for Foggy Nelson.

So he lets the Devil out a little. Wade apparently hasn’t left the roof since he chased him up there earlier. He’s holding a pigeon. Wade refuses to leave. Matt leaves him there and goes to chase down someone who smells like roofies.

He keeps craning his proverbial neck to proverbially look towards the East, towards Brooklyn. He knows the kid is probably out tonight, probably getting into trouble, probably doing his Spider-Man thing. Probably alone.

Matt sits on a fire escape at some point past 2am. He rests his head on the railing, feeling his newly bruised ribs throb uncomfortably. He can taste blood, and knows he bit his tongue from the sting. He might have fractured his arm a little, but the adrenaline hasn’t fully worn off so he isn’t exactly sure.

He’s somewhere farther south, he can tell that much. Still close to home, as always.

(Matt knows distantly, never consciously, that the only way he would ever permanently leave Hell’s Kitchen was if Foggy asked him. Not even in death would he leave, he already has it down in his will to be buried right next to his father. Here he was born, and here he will die. He knows this. He’s never thought about it for more than maybe a second.)

There’s a cool breeze. He can smell summer in the wind, closer and closer each day. Peter loved summer. Ever since he was a kid, he had loved the heat and the smell of hot pavement and the freedom of no school.

He knows because Peter told him, one November. Right after Thanksgiving, when Peter, May, and MJ had finally met the extended Nelson clan, because even Foggy knew they were family before they did and anyone who was family was to be introduced to the rest of the family posthaste.

“I hate the cold,” He had said, wrapped in four layers and two hats while they stood outside and felt the snow. “Summer is way better. 

Matt had laughed, standing in nothing but a dress shirt and slacks. “I hate the heat,” Matt had replied, grinning. “Winter is way better.”

Peter had shoved him. Matt shoved him back. They laughed together and Matt had said, “You’re a good kid, Pete.”

“No you,” Peter replied, laughing, and Matt knew then that he had too much to drink and needed to be deposited directly into the arms of his loving wife. Peter put up no fight, he was a clingy and giggly drunk and hung onto Matt like a sloth before grabbing onto MJ the second his eyes landed on her and pressing his face into her hair.

“Nooooo let me say bye to my brother,” Pete had said, a couple hours later, drunk and sleepy, fighting as MJ and May attempt to drag him into a cab. “Matt! Save me! I love you!”

Matt had laughed. He said goodnight. He went back inside and kissed Foggy and stole Theo’s drink and sang a very shitty rendition of Jingle Bells with Candance and couldn’t remember anything after that because he had too much to drink, too.

But he remembers this. He remembers that Peter hated winter, hated the chill, and that he loved summer and the heat that came with it.

Matt smells the summer in the wind and decides that he likes summer, too.

He wonders, idly, if Miles likes summer or winter better.

\----

In the end, he isn’t the one who seeks out Miles. Miles finds him.

It’s been a month since he properly met the kid. He’s walking home from work, having stayed late to work on a case. He doesn’t have his mask, just his cane and glasses. It’s a normal night, one of his designated days off as enforced by one Mr. Nelson, but he does make a note to check on the family on this block later. They’re either screaming in terror or laughter.

What brings his attention away from the screaming children isn’t the crash from blocks away. It isn’t the groan. It’s the whimper, painful and so soft that it’s obvious they don’t want to be heard.

Matt pauses in the street, listens, and begins speed walking into an alley while folding up his cane. He tucks it into his jacket while he runs and vaults over a fence. He’s moving towards the whimper as fast as he can, because he recognizes the heartbeat and can feel his own pounding in his chest like a jackhammer.

He reaches him in minutes, having to walk on the actual sidewalk when there was someone watching. He finally gets into the alley he heard it from and finds Miles laying face down on the ground with pushed over trash cans surrounding him.

Matt kneels next to him and gently rolls him onto his back. He gives another quiet whimper and just goes slack. He can’t smell blood, but he can feel heat radiating off of him, feels his shivering, smell his sweat, and hear his labored breathing.

“Kid,” Matt says softly and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, Miles.”

He doesn’t even have time to react before something shocks him and pain courses through his arm, making his muscles seize and forcefully knocking him back against the other side of the alley. He gasps as his back hits the brick and at the shock that runs through his body.

“Fuck,” He hisses, clutching at his chest as he feels the energy go into his heart. It beats abnormally only once, twice, but goes back to normal. “God, _fuck_.”

“Huu-uh…” Miles moans sadly and turns his head toward Matt’s direction. “M-“

He’s cut off by a terrible, body-wracking cough. It even has Matt wincing in sympathy, he sounds miserable. He coughs for a good thirty seconds straight, gasping for breath by the end of it.

“Mr. Mur- Murdock,” He rasps, trying to turn onto his stomach to push himself up. “Are you okay…?”

Matt wonders how the kid can worry about him when he sounds like he’s dying. His heart does something terrible, again.

“Don’t worry about me,” He says, standing up with help from the wall. His knees threaten to buckle underneath him and now he really knows that he’s getting old. “You’re sick.”

Miles whines and presses his mask into the ground. “Nooooooo.” He cries, less denying it and more wishing it wasn’t happening.

Matt thinks about how faraway the kid is from Brooklyn or Queens. He thinks about how he once went out with a cold and ended up getting pneumonia. He thinks about how this kid looks like he could snap a limb in half if he just landed on it wrong, and he wonders how many more times he’s gonna fall off a building tonight if he keeps going.

Matt sighs heavily.

“C’mon.” He orders, putting a hand on his shoulder more gently this time, with more warning. Peter sure as hell didn’t have electrokinesis or whatever that was. “Up and at ‘em. Gotta get you somewhere safe before you can pass out.”

Miles makes a pitiful sound and just lets Matt pick him up. He feels like he weighs 100 pounds when soaking wet, and Matt has no trouble putting his arm around his shoulders before swinging his legs up on his other arm and carrying him like that. He regains his bearings for just a moment, then takes off, taking back streets and dark alleys to get back to his apartment.

He takes the fire escape in, not wanting to alert the neighbors. He takes it slow, his shoes not built for gripping and the steps steep and narrow. The window is open, their AC broke the other day and Foggy hadn’t yet called someone for it, so Matt has no issue slipping inside with minimal jostling to Miles.

“Foggy?” He calls out, hearing him in the kitchen but not wanting to startle him.

“Matt?” Foggy pauses his frozen pizza making. “Shit, I didn’t even hear the front door open.”

“Yeah,” Matt groans as he kneels next to the couch, gently letting the kid down onto it. “There’s a reason for that.”

Foggy’s heart had begun speeding up the second he called to him, but now his heart rate has skyrocketed at his groan. He forgets the pizza and crashes into the living room. “Are you okay? Is that Miles? Is he hurt?”

“I’m okay,” He assures him, letting himself fall onto the floor next to the sofa. He pulls off his glasses and runs a hand down his face. “Miles is sick.”

“Oh, shit.” Foggy is already moving to the small utility closet in the entryway, grabbing their kit. “How bad?”

Matt sighs and runs through Miles’s symptoms again. “Fever, congestion, sore throat, and…” He cocks his head, listening to his teeth chatter slightly. “Chills.”

“Okay.” Foggy says, picking out the medicine and an extra blanket. “I can work with this.”

Matt lets Foggy mother hen Miles, he knows he needs it. Foggy needs to care for someone when he’s stressed and Matt is all too happy to not have it be him this time. He loves Foggy, he really does, but he’s had too much Advil shoved into his hands and too many minor injuries given the utmost care.

He listens to Foggy pull off the mask, setting it gently on the coffee table, and put a pillow under his head. He lays down several blankets over him and presses a wrapped gel pack from the freezer to his forehead. Miles isn’t conscious at this point, barely even moving or reacting to Foggy’s touch, except for the single whimper at his mask being removed. If he had been found by anyone other than Matt he wouldn’t have even been able to put up a fight.

“Does he have anyone we need to call?” Foggy asks, pressing his knuckles to his mouth and fidgeting like he wants to start making several gallons of chicken soup or make Matt take more unwanted pain meds for his definitely visibly bruised fists.

“His parent’s number?” Matt suggests. “May said he has parents. Well, family.”

“Miles, buddy,” Foggy starts gently, shaking Miles. Matt keeps an ear out for any buzz of electricity or whatever the hell happened to him last time he tried that. The kid wakes up and lets out a high pitched keen. He shifts under the many blankets. “What’s your family’s number?”

Miles groans and shakes his head. “Parents don’t know.”

“You haven’t told you parents?” Matt asks, brow furrowing. He’d assumed just based on May’s words that his parents knew.

“Mm-mm.” Miles hums, already drifting back to blissful sleep.

“Are they going to notice you’re not home?” Foggy thinks to ask. It’s a good question. There are many different reasons his parents might not notice.

“Mm-mm. School night.” He mumbles. “Dorms.”

“You live at school?” Matt clarifies.

“Mhm.” Miles hums again. “Roomie’ll cover me.” And like that, he’s out again.

“Welp,” Foggy stands up straight. “That works.”

Matt and Foggy have gross oven cooked frozen pizza as a late dinner and listen to reality TV in bed with Foggy’s amazingly disgusting descriptions of just how much tongue Brad uses when he kisses Madison.

Miles continues to rest, his breathing only slightly labored and uninterrupted the whole night. He doesn’t wake up when Foggy starts snoring. He doesn’t have any long pauses between inhaling and exhaling. His heart never suddenly stops beating. He tosses and turns and whimpers in his sleep but even when it’s sunrise, when the city is waking up, Miles sleeps soundly and Matt doesn’t sleep at all while sitting in the living room, his senses trained entirely on him.

He only really begins to stir when Matt does, having passed out in the chair sometime in the early morning. He wakes up to their personal house goblin curled up on Miles’s chest. She sounds like a motorboat and is gleefully sucking up any and all excess heat coming from the feverish boy.

This is the same cat that Foggy dubbed ‘Fluffy’ as some kind of sick joke. He had gotten her after Matt had expressed interest in cats, after months of Foggy begging, but upon arrival to the Nelson-Murdock and Murdock-Nelson household, Matt had found out the hard way that this was no fuzzy, soft kitten. She had only skin. Wrinkley, loose, terrible feeling skin.

Foggy explained this travesty as a way around Matt’s sensitivities to all furry animals. By sensitivities, he meant that he noticed Matt gets sneezing fits and serious sniffles around every animal ever to have fur. He even sniffs a bit around people who interact regularly with furry creatures.

Matt didn’t care if he got allergies around cats because cats were, objectively, the best out of all pets. They clean themselves, they never smell like hot garbage if they get wet, they poop in one spot only, and don’t ever have to be trained. Foggy wanted a dog for some reason even if they do none of those things.

Matt hates dogs. Foggy loves dogs. They compromised and now Matt suffers the consequences with a disgusting hairless thing of a pet.

The thing is looking at him, probably. Probably doing that stupid, smug, slow blink that Foggy likes to describe in detail when she’s being an asshole. He snarls at her and she makes a ‘mrrp’ noise.

“Goblin.” He mutters. Fluffy rumbles louder. Disgusting. He can feel the air currents around her skin, giving off a firm boundary of flesh instead of a blurriness of fur. Her very presence is annoying. He scowls.

“Daredevil...?”

Matt jumps and flinches away from the couch. Miles is awake, he realizes belatedly. His attention was too focused on the cat to notice his breathing get faster and shallower, and his heart rate speed up.

“Shit, kid.” Matt says with- was that fondness? Jesus. Knock it off. He has fondness for no one that isn’t Foggy, just a begrudging politeness.

Miles just coughs in response. Matt quickly stands, sways a little on his feet, and gets him a glass of water. He greedily gulps it down, being careful not to disturb the cat on him, and settles back down.

“Thanks,” He rasps, a hand coming up from under the blankets to rest on Fluffy. He smells awful, and by awful he means really sick. Sickness always has a distinct scent. Part of the reason why he doesn’t like hospitals. It gets in the air vents and permeates throughout the building.

“How’re you feeling?” Matt asks him, fully expecting an ‘I’m fine, Mr. Murdock, sir, don’t worry about me.’ because that’s what Peter said every time. Not that he can judge, that would be very hypocritical. Matt is many things but he is, above all else, painfully self-aware of his own flaws. Most of them, at least.

“Bad.” Miles chokes out, almost like a sob.

Matt twitches. Okay. This is a first. Let’s see if he denies needing medicine. “We have some Advil, if you want it.”

“Please.” He says, like a good child who understands what his needs are should. “I- I need a lot, though- ‘cause they don’t- don’t work in low doses since- since I got bit.”

He hands Miles a handful Advil. Miles counts them, then nods and swallows them with a gulp of water. He groans to himself as he settles back down, but suddenly makes a low whine.

“I’m still in my _suit_.” He laments to himself, rubbing his legs together under the covers like a cricket, feeling the spandex. He stays silent for a second as if pondering the pros and cons of removing it but settles on ‘Nah.’ and just faces the back of the couch with Fluffy now laying on his hip. He’s back out within a minute.

Matt rubs at his scruff with his hand and decides to go make coffee and soup.

He presses a cup of fresh coffee into Foggy’s hands when he wakes up and says nothing when he stares at the pot of homemade soup simmering away. It’s just a recipe he found online that had an audio description and no long winded story about how it was their favorite childhood soup to have after a night where their mom beat them or something.

Foggy kisses him goodbye a little later and goes to work, Matt staying home to look after Miles. When he tells him this, Foggy just gives him a smile he can hear and another kiss and Matt grumbles about how it was only right to not leave a sick kid alone in your home all day. Foggy says “Whatever you need it to be, Matty.” and leaves before Matt can get a word in.

Miles wakes up again about three hours later. He lays there for a bit, petting the cat who had moved to his chest, before sitting up and sniffling.

“Tissues are on the coffee table.” Matt says from the office. He hears a muffled thanks before Miles blows his nose twice, sneezes fifty times in a row, and then blows it again. He lays down again but doesn’t fall asleep. Then he hears his stomach growl.

He pauses his screen reader and sighs, running a hand over his face. He stands and moves into the living room. Miles is continuing to pet the cat and breathing through his mouth, unable to use his nose anymore. He moves his head up to watch him blearily.

“Oh, Daredevil,” He murmurs, pressing his head deeper into the pillow. “Was wondering whose house I was in.”

“You don’t remember this morning? Or last night?” Matt asks, moving to refill the empty cup on the coffee table.

“Kinda. I remember feeling awful.” Miles hums in response and sighs. “Is Mr. Nelson here?”

Matt smirks at the ‘Mr. Nelson’. “No. He’s at work.”

“What about you?” He asks, shifting slightly. “Don’t you have work?”

“Can’t go to work when I have a spider child sick on my couch.” He turns on the sink.

“Oh,” He says. “Guess that makes sense.”

Matt sets the cup on the table again. “Feeling better today?”

Miles nods his head. “Crap, sorry. I just nodded.”

Matt laughs a little. “I could tell, don’t worry.”

“Oh, right.” He says. “Wait, how?”

Matt hums, trying to find a way to describe it to him. “I can tell your movements based on the way the air currents move around you and the sound your muscles and joints make when moving."

“Dude, that is so creepy.”

“So I’ve heard. Hungry?”

“Yeah. So, hold up, are you like a dolphin? Or- or a bat? Or a whale? With their echolocation thing?”

“Not a whale, but yes. I can use echolocation.” Matt walks back into the kitchen and gets to filling a bowl with the soup left warming on the stove. “The sound of someone’s heart is enough to map out a room for me.”

“Map out? Like, can you visualize it in your head?” Miles sits up, the couch springs groaning lightly. “Wait, no wait, before you said you can hear people’s heartbeats and stuff and you can recognize them? Can you do that with the way people walk?”

“Yes, I can visualize it in my head, which yes, does mean I can think in pictures.” Matt explains, pouring a ladle of chicken noodle into the bowl. “Also yes, I can recognize some people like that but it takes more focus on my part. I’m sure most people can recognize different gaits, not just those of us with enhanced hearing.”

“Woah, that is so cool.” Matt can hear the awe in Miles’s voice.

“I thought you said it was creepy.” He points out while handing the bowl to Miles.

“It can be both.” Miles tells him. “Creepy and cool things are the best things.”

“What else is creepy and cool?” Matt asks, taking a seat in a living room chair.

“Ghosts,” Miles says through a full mouth. “Zombies. Bats. Oh, abandoned buildings at night.”

“A lot of people would call all of those things only creepy.”

“Well, a lot of people don’t like spicy food but that doesn’t mean they’re right.”

“Touche.” It’s a near thing that Matt doesn’t laugh.

Miles takes another bite and hums around his spoon.

“So, can you like, talk to bats?”

Matt does laugh this time.

Eventually, Foggy returns home to find Miles and Matt in a very intense discussion of whether or not Daredevil is actually just real-life Batman. He watches them go back and forth before inputting that he was basically the Alfred in this situation and that Daredevil was a poor man’s Batman. Miles radiates smugness and Matt just huffs and crosses his arms in defeat but can’t keep the smile off his face. It’s annoying how infectious Miles’s enthusiasm and positivity is.

Later that night, after a dinner of thai take out and after giving Miles a clean bill of health from his apparent mini flu, Foggy wishes out loud several times that he had a super metabolism without any of the other powers. Matt smiles and pats him on the back consolingly.

Miles leaves in his suit after disinfecting it and showering. It’s a short goodbye, Foggy continuing to be jealous and Matt offering a small smile and a “Be careful, kiddo.” before he’s off. He promises to return the favor but Matt refuses his offer. He doesn’t want the kid to feel indebted to him for something that small, that basic. It just wouldn’t have been right to do anything than what he did. 

It was only right, he tells himself. He didn’t do it for any other reason.

 

\----

 

Matt’s perched on his favorite building one night, only a few days later, when Miles swings into his perception.

Matt notices him by the intense spray paint fumes radiating off his suit from a few blocks away. He’s been hearing whispers that Spider-Man is looking for Daredevil from all over Manhattan tonight, so he decided to place himself in plain view and let Miles come to him.

He does, when swinging by and noticing him on the ledge. He jumps off his web, flips, and lands on his feet on the other side of the roof.

“Hey, Daredevil!” He waves, and Matt huffs with a smile before standing and facing him.

“Spider-Man,” He says as he walks towards Miles. “Heard you were looking for me.”

“Yeah, oh man, I need a huge favor.” Miles explains. “I heard from a couple guys I webbed up last week for breaking and entering that there’s a huge gun deal happening between two seperate gangs near the docks tonight.”

Matt tilts his head. “You want me to help you take them out.”

“Yeah, ‘cus, like, I haven’t been shot yet, and Wade said that if I did it by myself I’d definitely get shot. So I’m trying very hard to prevent getting shot but _also_ to prevent that deal from going down, y’know?”

“Wade told you that."

“Yeah.”

“So why won’t Wade help you?”

“He said it’s because I’m ‘no fun’ for telling him he shouldn’t kill people. He’s seriously messed up.”

Yes, Wade is very messed up. Matt sighs. “Alright."

Miles lights up. “Really? You’re gonna help me?”

“Yeah, kid. I’ll come with you.” Mostly because Matt knows what it’s like to get shot and if he can prevent this child from that experience, he will.

Miles fist pumps triumphantly and leads the charge northwards.

 

\----

 

Neither of them get shot. All of the gang members get webbed up or knocked unconscious.

Miles calls the cops while Matt listens from a nearby roof, poking at his swelling cheek. The skin has split, and he has a fat lip. He can taste blood in the back of his throat and feel it dried and flaking under his nose and on his chin. Foggy’s going to be upset, he always is when Matt gets face injuries; He frowns and hums sadly and won’t make out with him until it’s fully healed which Matt thinks is kind of unfair.

Miles finishes up the call and swings up to the roof with Matt. They sit on the ledge, Miles kicking his legs a bit and stretching his hands out with a soft hiss.

“Sprain?” Matt asks, his cheek stinging as the salty wind from the bay blows over him..

“Maybe,” Miles says, frowning and trying to bend his wrist again. He winces when he bends it again and presses a thumb to his tendon, massaging it a little.

Matt listens closer to his arm as he moves it, searching for the cause of the pain. “You fractured your wrist.” He diagnoses, hearing the bone grind against itself. It makes his teeth ache, hearing it, so he quickly tunes it out again.

“Aw, man.” Miles sighs. “I’m gonna have to wrap it. There’s no way my parents aren’t gonna notice that.”

“Could say you sprained it because you’ve been working so hard in school.” Matt tells him, then pauses. Miles continues to prod at it with his other hand, pouting. “Are you going to be okay getting home with that?”

“Huh?” Miles looks up. “Oh, oh yeah, I’ll be fine. I can just use my right hand to swing back.”

Matt nods and decides to stay there on the rooftop until he can hear the sirens coming their way. Miles eventually leaves the fracture alone, bringing his arm to his chest like a raptor and pulling his phone from his suit. Matt hears the tapping of his fingers on a phone screen and the occasional amused sound, and deduces he must be texting a friend.

The thing is, Matt can pinpoint the exact moment his wrist broke tonight. It was when he threw a punch at someone’s jaw, his wrist bent at the wrong angle. It hadn’t broken, not fully, but it was a close thing. His form had been all wrong, that had been the root cause. Matt makes a note in his head to teach him how to throw a real punch.

Before he can dwell on that thought, he hears the sirens get only a couple blocks away, and stands. Miles watches him as he moves to the other side of the roof, placing one hand on a half wall separating the two buildings.

“Hey.” He calls out to him.

“Yeah?”

Matt hesitates, just for one second, before saying the thing that has been rolling around in his head all night. “You’re good, kid.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Miles says, smile in his voice.

Matt feels the monster inside his heart settle down for the night. “Be careful.”

“Later, Double D!” Miles calls after him as he hops over and down, knees hitting metal shingles.

Matt listens to Miles make a happy noise as he walks away.

He really is a good kid.


End file.
